The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Gunnar Hansen: 10 true stories

From the slaughterhouse soundtrack to the real human skeleton on set: 10
little-known facts about the iconic horror film, which starred Gunnar Hansen
as killer Leatherface

Marilyn Burns, who died last year, in The Texas Chainsaw MassacrePhoto: EVERETT/REX

By Rebecca Hawkes

3:07PM GMT 08 Nov 2015

1. Leatherface wasn't just based on Ed Gein

Director Tobe Hooper and writer Kim Henkel have famously admitted to drawing inspiration for some of Leatherface's nastier habits from real-life killer Ed Gein, who murdered two women in Wisconsin in the Fifties, kept parts of their bodies as macabre trophies, and raided local graveyards to collect human remains. But Hooper was also influenced by a much more obscure case: that of a Houston serial murderer named Elmer Wayne Henley.

"I saw some news report where Elmer Wayne was identifying bodies and their locations, and he was this skinny little 17-year-old, and he kind of puffed out his chest and said, ‘I did these crimes, and I’m gonna stand up and take it like a man.’ Well, that struck me as interesting, that he had this conventional morality at that point. He wanted it known that, now that he was caught, he would do the right thing. So this kind of moral schizophrenia is something I tried to build into the characters.”

2. The cannibal family home became ... a restaurant

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The 1890s Victorian building used to represent the Sawyer's charnel-house home fell into disrepair, was dismantled in 1998 and rebuilt in the grounds of The Antlers Hotel, located to the North West of Austin, Texas. The house was then, rather aptly, transformed into a restaurant, The Chariot Grill. Bon appétit.

3. A real human skeleton appears at the end of the film

Hooper reportedly used a real human skeleton from Japan, because it worked out cheaper than buying a fake prop. (Sadly, this probably wouldn't be the case these days – skeletons were cheaper in the Seventies.) The remains of "eight cows, three goats, one chicken, two deer, and an armadillo" were also incorporated into the set, to create an authentic slaughterhouse atmosphere (accprding to TCM art director Bob Burns, via Gunnar Hansen's book Chain Saw Confidential). As the shoot took place over five weeks, in temperatures of up to 40 C, the set soon began to reek.

4. The exact model of chainsaw used? A Poulan 245A

On set, the brand name had to be covered by a piece of black tape, to avoid potential legal problems. We're not sure why: while Leatherface does sustain a nasty leg injury towards the end of the film, on the whole The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a pretty effective advert for the Poulan 245A.

5. The cast tucked into spacecakes on set

Given Texas Chainsaw Massacre's intense, trippy quality, it's perhaps not all that surprising to learn that, on the final night of filming, the actors and crew tucked into a batch of marijuana-laced brownies. Gunnar Hansen, the 6ft 4in Icelandic actor playing Leatherface (sadly, his death at the age of 68 was announced today) had never experienced the drug before. While battling dizziness, he had to film a scene in which he chainsawed through a front door. Luckily for everyone involved, he managed to keep the chainsaw on the door.

6. The soundtrack mimics the inside of a slaughterhouse

Hooper's film, which takes place against a backdrop of disenfranchised slaughterhouse workers, forces audiences to confront some of the more visceral realities of the meat industry. Humans in the film are butchered as if they were animals, and the now-infamous "meathook scene" (which is actually much less explicit than commonly remembered) has gone down in horror film history. In a particularly grim touch, Hooper also deliberately incorporated sound effects into his film that recreated the noises an animal would hear when inside a slaughterhouse.

7. All that blood and screaming? Probably real

Remember the dinner sequence towards the end of the film in which Leatherface slices Sally's finger, tenderly allowing the Grandfather to slurp down some of her blood? (Say what you like about Leatherface and his family: they respected their elders.) Actress Marilyn Burns's finger had to be cut in real life, after a prop failed to work properly. Burns, who died last month aged 65, also suffered numerous scratches and bruises from running through the woods, hurt her ankle, and was poked, prodded, dragged and hit during filming.

8. Tobe Hooper was inspired by the stresses of Christmas shopping

Hooper claims to have dreamt up the idea of a chainsaw-wielding killer after becoming frustrated by the crowds in a shopping centre in the run up to Christmas. After spotting a batch of chainsaws in the hardware section, he imagined being able to slice his way through the packed store.

9. Everyone had to wear the same clothes for five weeks

While the shoot took place over five weeks, the events of the actual film all occur within 24 hours. Consequently, the cast had to wear the same clothes each day. Burns's costume ended up caked in both fake and real blood, while Hansen, who had to wear a bloodstained butcher's apron, revealed that, by the end of filming, he smelt so bad that no one would sit next to him at lunch.

10. Edwin Neal used to get a kick out of scaring people in cinemas

Neal, who starred in the film as the scarily unhinged hitchhiker, used towatch the movie repeatedly at a cinema in Austin after its release. The actor would scare unsuspecting cinemagoers by waiting until his scenes began, then leaning forwards and tapping them on the shoulder. Perhaps understandably, the cinema finally asked him to desist.